Cathy watches TV: Inside Job

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I was scrolling through Netflix looking for something to watch this week when I stumbled upon Inside Job, which I’d never even heard of despite it being in its second season, apparently. Also, apparently people love it. Google reviews give it a 4.7/5 stars. It’s 79% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. And it’s 7.6/10 on IMDb. Apparently creator and writer Shion Takeuchi worked in the Animation Department for Inside Out (2015).

As soon as I realized it was about conspiracy theories, I almost noped out. Besides being a general scourge, I’ve found myself in the unfortunate circumstance of having to deal with them in my family and personal life over the past year or so. At first I was like, is it really ethically responsible to give this shit more airtime? Then I thought, this shit is in the ether whether we like it or not. And it has real-world consequences.

I think I’m at like episode 4 of season 1. What I love about the show is that it highlights in a really funny way what’s so unbelievable about most conspiracy theories. Namely, the “conspiracy” part and the “theory” part.

First, let’s define our terms. A conspiracy theory is a story about how a group of people successfully pulled something off for decades or millennia while covering their tracks well enough to leave the plot in the realm of theory and not pretty well-established history.

Under this definition, MKUltra, for example, is not a conspiracy theory. It’s more like a conspiracy fact, as there’s tons of compelling evidence showing that CIA agents did in fact very likely conduct experiments involving dosing unwitting subjects with LSD.

The existence of lizard people is a conspiracy theory, as there does not exist tons of compelling evidence showing that some beings that appear to be humans are in fact reptiles.

The big problem with this dichotomy is the significant and legitimate disagreement that exists over what counts as “tons,” “compelling,” and “evidence.” In each case, we’re talking about a spectrum, not a binary.

I think I’m going to research an emerging pet theory about how loneliness creates conspiracy theorists. But for now, I’m going to share my existing pet theory about conspiracy theorists. It’s my belief and experience that no one who’s ever led a group of adults in trying to accomplish anything remotely ambitious walks away with an intact belief in conspiracy theories.

Notice that they have to have been in a position of leadership. If you’re just on the team, you can always blame leadership. Until you are leadership, when you realize that getting people to do shit well is fucking hard for anyone. It also very much helps to have been on multiple teams, and to have worked with extremely high-achieving individuals. That way, you can’t just say the people you’re working with aren’t the sharpest Crayons in the box.

When you’ve led multiple teams of some of the smartest, most capable, most motivated people on the planet to work toward goals that really shouldn’t be that difficult to accomplish you walk away with the stunning realization that people really really suck at working together to get shit done.

My problem with conspiracy theories is that they vastly overestimate both how evil and competent people can be at the same time. Listen, people can be extremely evil. And they can be incredibly competent. But they are almost never both at the same time, thank fucking God. And, by definition, extremely evil and extremely competent people are also very rare. There are simply nowhere near enough people in existence at any one time endowed with the requisite evilnesss and competence (see this study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 via @thatscottglenn) to pull off the vast, unproven conspiracy theories that are currently circulating.

In real life, even the best people bicker and fight over petty shit, leak information, forget shit, get lost, power grab, hoard information, say the wrong thing, get lazy, get depressed, accidentally offend each other, give up, move on, spread gossip, sow division, etc. etc. etc. far too frequently to finish not-that-ambitious projects on-time and under-budget. I mean hell, you don’t even need to experience leadership to understand this. Just read history.

But I’m supposed to believe a small group of people are disciplined enough to run the entire world to benefit themselves and screw everyone else over while covering their tracks so thoroughly that no one can show any compelling, definitive evidence that this cabal even exists? Nah, fam. The math isn’t mathing.

And that’s what the show highlights so hilariously.

First, the vast, vast majority of people are basically good and pro-social. They don’t want to hurt people, though under the right set of incentives they often will. Especially if they can justify it with something like nationalism.

And the vast, vast majority of people are pretty bumbling the vast majority of the time. Even if they wanted to do evil, which they mostly don’t, they’re not capable of doing it very well, very secretly, for very long. Certainly not well enough, secretly enough, or long enough for what’s in conspiracy theories to be true.

The last thing I want to say about conspiracy theories is WHO THE HELL CARES?

Okay, so a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibals rules the world. And? Are you going to be able to do anything about that? No? Okay well then maybe you should work on expanding the Child Tax Credit instead, or criminal justice reform, or codifying the right to choose, or protecting kids from abuse, or fighting sex trafficking by decriminalizing sex work or fighting laws that criminalize being trans or or or. There is absolutely no shortage of ACTUAL CONSPIRACIES for which we have shit tons of extremely compelling evidence. Why would you focus on the evil that might be happening but probably isn’t when you could instead fight the evil that’s almost certainly or certainly happening?

Ahem.

Anyway, my babies. It’s a funny show which I think I enjoy more because my years in libertarianism exposed me to a lot of conspiratorial thinking which means I get a larger percentage of the jokes than is likely ideal. I hope you enjoy it as well. <3